{"id":7597,"date":"2022-02-09T22:05:10","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T22:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7597"},"modified":"2022-02-09T22:05:42","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T22:05:42","slug":"x-deaths-of-wolverine-2-annotation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7597","title":{"rendered":"X Deaths of Wolverine #2 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #2<\/strong>
\nby Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini & Dijjo Lima<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> Moira caught between the techno-organic Wolverine and Mystique. In the solicitations, Moira was shown as a blanked-out silhouette, to avoid spoiling the plot. Ironically, in the final version, she’s still got brown hair (which she dyed blonde last issue) in order to make her more recognisable.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong>\u00a0Moira robs a convenience store and calls Jane Foster.<\/em><\/p>\n

Presumably Moira is picking up the things she needs for her home surgery later in the issue. (But if she’s relying on theft for everything, how did she get to America?)<\/p>\n

Moira has special Krakoan cancer, interwoven with “floronic matter”. “Floronic” isn’t actually a real word – the DC villain Floronic Man was named after his home dimension – but apparently it means something to people in the Marvel Universe. Let’s assume it’s come to be understood as the sort of stuff Krakoan technology uses.<\/p>\n

“The No-Place biome.”<\/strong> Moira concludes that she picked up the cancer from the hidden biome within Krakoa, where she was living throughout the Hickman era, and that “[t]hey” did this on purpose. This begs questions. Moira presumably isn’t suggesting that Xavier and Magneto were trying to poison her all along. Mystique and Destiny can’t have used the biome\u00a0<\/em>to do this.\u00a0Is she suggesting that Cypher and Krakoa were always planning this, at least once they found out what she was up to? That doesn’t really make sense either, given that Cypher let her escape. But the idea that Krakoa was doing it makes a bit more sense.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. Again, this is rather skewed in favour of Moira – it takes at face value her claim that precognitives had to be kept off Krakoa for her own sake, when\u00a0Inferno<\/em> made it pretty obvious that Moira had a particular animus to Destiny.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page. Sage makes notes on the appearance of a duplicate Wolverine on Krakoa last issue.<\/p>\n

Marvel Girl<\/strong> saw the second Wolverine last issue. The “physical and emotional toll of their current mission” refers to the plot of\u00a0X Lives of Wolverine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“Singing stones”<\/strong> are basically bugs made out of stone, used by X-Force to spy on people. They were first mentioned in\u00a0Wolverine<\/em> #8.<\/p>\n

Black Tom Cassidy<\/strong> isn’t responding because the techno-organic Wolverine killed (or at least badly injured) him last issue. X-Force obviously figure that out soon enough, because on page 19 Professor X refers to “the pod Black Tom found”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-10.\u00a0<\/strong>The techno-organic Wolverine seizes a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico.<\/em><\/p>\n

He doesn’t say much, this guy. He does at least throw the crew over the side, instead of killing them – even though one of them has stabbed him – but how much good that’ll do them is debatable.<\/p>\n

PAGE 11.<\/strong> Moira decides that Mystique is tailing her using the techno-organic arm.<\/em><\/p>\n

This may well be true, but begs the question of why Cypher gave it to her in the first place. Did he just want Moira to be discreetly killed somewhere off Krakoa, where he wouldn’t have to think about it? Moira did actually raise this point in\u00a0Inferno<\/em> #4, asking Cypher “Is this your way to keep tabs on me, Douglas?” Cypher effectively denied it, though didn’t say so in terms. (“I don’t care where you go. I just figured, wherever you’re going, you’d probably do better with two hands.”<\/p>\n

The two flashback panels show Moira on a bench with Professor X in\u00a0House of X<\/em> #2, and Mystique and Destiny confronting Moira in\u00a0Inferno<\/em> #4 (specifically, page 35 panel 1).<\/p>\n

PAGE 12.<\/strong>\u00a0Mystique shows up in pursuit.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s obviously Mystique, and that’s confirmed soon after.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-14.<\/strong>\u00a0Moira cuts off her techno-organic arm.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not much you can add to that, really.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16.<\/strong>\u00a0Mystique finds Moira’s room and gets blown up.<\/em><\/p>\n

If the arm is indeed a tracking device then this is an ironic inversion of the way Moira’s severed arm was used as a decoy in\u00a0Inferno<\/em>\u00a0(because of the tracking device inside). But… hold on. If it’s a tracking device, why did Mystique have to torture the guy at the front desk in order to find out what room Moira was in? Maybe Mystique’s tracking ability is pretty general… or maybe Moira just cut her arm off for nothing.<\/p>\n

Mystique dies in the explosion (as seen on page 21), but of course she’ll just be resurrected.<\/p>\n

PAGE 17.<\/strong>\u00a0Destiny reflects on events.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I warned her that this would likely come to pass.”<\/strong>\u00a0In\u00a0Inferno<\/em> #4, Destiny simply said that if they allowed Moira to leave, “Her future branches wildly. She has hard choices to make. Until then, there will be no clarity.” If Destiny has started giving Mystique more useful guidance about Moira, then presumably Moira’s choices have started to narrow things down.<\/p>\n

PAGE 18.<\/strong> Data page: Sage analyses the singing stone records.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the techno-organic Wolverine is one of\u00a0the Phalanx<\/strong>. That’s seemingly confirmed on page 20, when we get a shot from Wolverine’s point of view that also has the word “Phalanx” in shot.<\/p>\n

The Phalanx are a techno-organic hivemind race, linked to Warlock’s Technarch species, who were major villains back in the 1990s. In Hickman’s cosmology – if we’re still doing that – the Phalanx are a key example of post-humanity, the evolutionary direction that outcompetes mutants. But note that this particular Phalanx is a Wolverine, and thus post-mutant.<\/p>\n

PAGE 19.<\/strong>\u00a0Forge investigates the pod.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the pod that the techno-organic Wolverine emerged from last issue. The obvious implication is that he’s a time traveller from a thousand years in the future, or something of that sort.<\/p>\n

In which case, this looks a lot like\u00a0Terminator<\/em>, and the obvious parallel would be that\u00a0X Lives\u00a0<\/em>is Wolverine going to the past to preserve the timelines, and\u00a0X Deaths<\/em> is future Wolverine coming to the present to… preserve it? Alter it?<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-24.<\/strong>\u00a0Future Wolverine shows up at the motel.<\/em><\/p>\n

He apparently\u00a0is<\/em> following a signal from the techno-organic arm – which registers as Warlock – but it’s unclear whether that’s because he’s interested in the arm or in Moira. The next bit is difficult to follow – he seems to be connecting to the motel’s router (physically) in order to run a search for\u00a0Arnab Chakladar<\/strong> of\u00a0Epiphany<\/strong>, the post-human tech mogul who was mentioned last issue. I wondered at first if the guy’s supposed to have something to do with the motel, and this is something to do with security footage, but it seems like future Wolverine just needs to physically connect to a modem in order to access the internet. So… maybe he’s from the far future but, in a very real sense, he’s also from 1992.<\/p>\n

PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: BLOOD IN THE WATER.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #2 by Benjamin Percy, Federico Vicentini & Dijjo Lima COVER \/ PAGE 1. Moira caught between the techno-organic Wolverine and Mystique. In the solicitations, Moira was shown as a blanked-out silhouette, to avoid spoiling the plot. Ironically, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7597"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7600,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7597\/revisions\/7600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}